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ON THIS DAY IN LONDON

14th August 1967 Pirate radio stations Radio 270, Radio London, Radio Ireland

14th August 1948 The first Summer Olympics to be held since 1936, were closed in London.

14th August 1941 Josef Jakobs, German spy, executed in Tower of London

14th August 1903 Born today: Ronald Stewart, CEO (London Brick Co)

14th August 1867 Forsyte Saga author John Galsworthy was born in Kingston Upon Thames.

14th August 1802 Poet and novelist Letitia Elizabeth Landon (LEL) was born in Chelsea, London.

David Bowie's Secondary School

A Techincal College fit for a legendary rock star

Location: Oakley Road, Bromley, BR2 8HP

Description: Ravens Wood School for boys (formerly 'Bromley Technical High School') is an all boys school except in the Sixth Form where it is mixed.

But back in the day when it was called 'Bromley Technical High School', one 'David Bowie was in attendance after failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education.

It was an unusual technical school, as biographer 'Christopher Sandford' writes:

Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any English public school. There were houses, named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Pitt and Wilberforce. There was a uniform, and an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. There was also an accent on languages, science and particularly design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton.

In David's account, Frampton led through force of personality, not intellect; his colleagues at Bromley Tech were famous for neither, and yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a regime so liberal that Frampton actively encouraged his own son, Peter, to pursue a musical career with David, a partnership briefly intact thirty years later.

Throughout his career, David has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded 9 Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and 8 Silver, and in the United States, 5 Platinum and 7 Gold certifications.